 Hello and welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we're drinking Salem's Smoked Porter. Nice! Today we're going to be covering 1988's Maniac Cop. Maniac Cop is directed by William Lustig, who directed the great horror movie that we've already covered, Maniac. Mm-hmm. This movie is written by Larry Cohen, who wrote and directed many great schlocky horror movies. It's alive, the stuff in the list goes on and on. Oh yeah, for sure. The ladies man, Tom Atkins is in this, he stars in this. How can you go wrong with that already? Bruce Campbell is in this, and Sam Raimi makes a small appearance too. Maniac Cop starts off with his waitress walking home after her shift at some sick seedy bar. Yeah. Gets attacked by a couple of muggers, and she runs away, runs, runs, runs, and finally comes across this cop in the park. He's all in shadows. She's happy to see him, too, right? He's helpful, thank you, thank you. And this cop just picks her up right off the ground and breaks her neck, and the muggers are like, Oh, yeah, it scares them. Well, they run off. We're introduced to Lieutenant McRae, and he's investigating the murder scene. He's talking to the thugs that saw this, and they're like, oh man, it was a cop, man, it was a cop that killed her. He goes to a superior, and he's like, yeah, I think we might have a killer cop on our hands. And the superior's like, no, no, don't even think about that. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. There's no way. If I stay out, Rebecca and so. But in the meantime, the killings continue. This maniac cop keeps killing, and they realize all we might have a killer cop on our hands. We're introduced to Jack Forrest, who's getting ready to do some overtime. His wife is suspicious of him, and he's walking to work. But he doesn't go to work. He goes to some sick motel, and she follows him, goes into the room, and he's having an affair. With some bunny cop. I can explain. So she gets pissed off and storms out. The next day, who do they find dead in a motel? Well, Forrest's wife is dead in the hotel. The same hotel room that she found him in. Honest citizens are getting scared and trigger happy, too, right? At the honest cops, and they're starting to kill them. Yeah, there's that great senior that cop knocks on that woman's door. Yeah. Blows him away. And it's just like a routine traffic stop, too, like, fuck. Forrest is arrested for the murder of his wife, and while Lieutenant McCrae and that chief of police guy, if you were home, your wife would not have suspected you. Lieutenant McCrae starts to realize that it's got to be somebody else, right? You're getting framed for all this shit. And all of that leads McCrae into the records department of the building, where he starts to learn a little more about cops who are having these sort of mental problems, mental breakdowns. And he suspects that somebody is leaking information to this maniac cop, and he's starting to suspect that it's this woman who's running the records department. One night he follows her. He runs into the security guard, too, who's in Beverly Hills Cop 2. He does actually see the woman from the records department interacting with maniac cop. I need you. You need me. Lieutenant McCrae confronts the woman in the records department, and she actually gets pissed off and starts beating them all up with this crotch. His hand gets all busted. Beats the shit out of Tom Atkins. The cop comes in and starts clearing the fucking precinct. He starts killing cops one by one, and that's where we're going to end the story. If you want to see what's going to happen with Forrest, Lieutenant McCrae, Records Woman, and even maniac cop, keep watching because it'll keep you on the edge of your seat. Did he used to have maniac cop on VHS? Yeah. I bought it in a big lot, and the whole lot was moldy. That's right, yeah. I remember that. Yeah, you did take it a little too far with the open casket viewing and whatnot. Justin, goodbye to the VHS. Good boy. Good boy. Mold. $22 has got mold on it, oh my VHS. First thing we have to say about this movie is it's a fantastic story. The story is actually for a horror slasher type movie, pretty interesting and a little convoluted. There's a lot of twists and turns, and there's this whole investigation which keeps you intrigued. It's even neat how all the evidence is always linking to Bruce Campbell's character Forrest. Everything leads to him, so it's really well written. Always to keep you enthralled, and the pacing really helps with that too, right? All the killings mostly happen in the beginning of the movie. High body count, early, then story and mystery and character building and finding out what's really happening. And then at the end, again, it ramps right up, right? The casting is fantastic for this movie. Tom Atkins, how can you beat Tom Atkins? He's a perfect person to cast for the kind of broken down, disgruntled cop. Heavy drinking cop. Heavy drinking doesn't really trust the system anymore. And Bruce Campbell is in this too, he does a fucking great job. Spreading his wings, right? He's not playing ass, he's not playing that type of character, it's a bit more dramatic for him. Get to see that he actually can act. Pretty damn good. Yeah, he's not camping it up at all in this, it's all serious. Exactly. He does a great job of playing it serious. And Robert Zdarski as the maniac cop, again perfect casting. This guy is the perfect maniac cop. He was diagnosed with chubberism. So basically like these glands or whatever keep growing in your face and he's got this big kind of face but it's just perfect. He's perfect for roles like this. The same way where people like Ron Perlman, he's perfect for like monster roles. And the great thing they do with maniac cop too is they don't show his face until the end. They keep him in the shadows, you have no clue what he looks like. You know he's got a big chin and jaw, which is great for Bruce Campbell being the fall guy. Exactly. Because he's got the big chin, right? So it's really perfect. And when you find out the whole backstory, what happened to maniac cop, then they show his face. So I love how they save the revealing of maniac cop till the really bitter end. They play that up so good. They keep maniac cop in the shadows and they keep it dark. And you're always wondering, who is this? Is it somebody on the force? You don't know that it's maybe somebody that's not on the force, imitating a cop? Or is it a cop? Yeah, you don't know. You don't know because they keep the guy in the shadows. And the setting is great too. Just like maniac. It's directed by the same director as maniac. All the locations in this are kind of dark and gritty and seedy. The seedy motel, seedy bars. Even the police station has a bit of like seedyness to it. Like in the morgue, it's like some shitty morgue in a shitty police station. Everything about this is kind of ugh. Yeah, it sort of makes you uneasy. The mystery behind this movie is pretty good too. Like the whole investigative side of it that Tom Atkins is doing is really good. It grips you in too, right? It grips you in more so than the killings. There's all these red herrings that are pointing to different people in the department or maybe outside and he's the one uncovering everything and you're always on the edge of your seat because he's going out following up on the leads too, right? Putting himself in danger. The dialogue in this movie is great too. A lot of great little scenes like between Tom Atkins and that sergeant guy at the bar. Just little interactions which are really good with great dialogue that doesn't seem cheesy even though it's kind of maniac-cop, a cheesy movie, you know? But the dialogue is not cheesy whatsoever. Actually, the dialogue is very realistic in a movie where it's kind of over the top, right? It makes sense that everybody's real in this. Yeah, everyone is real, everyone seems real. The whole cop aspect of this movie is really cool too. People trust police, policemen. They're gonna come up to you and he just takes them out. And also the weapons that he uses, right? He's got a full fucking arsenal. And then it gets flipped on its side, right? Where all these killings are happening and suddenly people stop trusting cops. Exactly, yeah. And that's a real life issue too. It's kind of dealing with these real life issues like corrupt cops. Yeah, over the top. People not trusting cops, you know, that still is a thing, right? Corrupt cops. It's abuse of power, right? It's always been a thing and it kind of deals with that. It touches on it and uses it to build whore. This movie has got tons of Evil Dead cameos which is cool. Of course Bruce Campbell is the main character, Sam Raimi is a cameo, and Dan Hicks who plays Jake in Evil Dead 2 is in this as well. Bobby Joel! I ain't holding your hand. And this movie has a lot of no way out situations which is great. Like there's a lot of situations in this movie, you're like, how are they getting out? Yeah, you are trapped. There's no fucking way you're getting out of this. And it teases a lot of things too. This movie teases you in so many places. You know, even with Bruce Campbell. It teases Bruce Campbell. Everyone knows Bruce Campbell. It teases the first scene with him. They don't show his face until he leaves the room. The kills for this movie are awesome. There's that one kill early on in the beginning where he does a routine traffic stop, taps on the window, and you know, of course, they're trusting of the police. The guy gets out and he pulls his knife out, slashes his throat, and then throws the guy right into the windshield. He's all super strong. And just the guy just flies. You get all the blood on the windshield. It looks like it's a great shot. Stalks that guy and, like, the guy trips in that wet cement, pushes his face in that wet cement, and it just cuts to, like, the daytime and it's dry. They're all jackhammering the guy out. And then, of course, when he takes out the whole police force, it's fantastic. And the music for this movie is awesome, really. Like, they do such a good job. Exactly what you need for a movie like this. It's dark, so you need a lot of low-tone synths. Then at the end of the awesome finale, that big action-packed finale, the music gets all, like, kind of more cop-style, action-cop-chase music. So it really fits every scene perfectly. And it's a perfect 80s synth score. Exactly. So if you want a movie that combines the slasher genre, the cop genre, and the action genre all in one, Maniac Cop is like the perfect combination of all those things. It does them all really well. Exactly. It's got Tom Atkins and Bruce Campbell in it. Like, you can't go wrong. They're almost like the B-Hore movie dream team. The only complaint I have about this movie is I wish Bruce Campbell and Tom Atkins had more screen time together. Yeah. Right? They don't interact much. They don't act as a team too much. Until next time, keep drinking.